Obama 11th-Hour Attack on Romney May Involve False Abortion Story

With millions of pro-life voters up in arms about President Barack Obama’s lengthy pro-abortion record and pro-life groups backing Mitt Romney as a pro-life contrast to him, the 2012 election has already become an ideological one that will likely be won by the candidate with the best voter turnout of his base.

However, if Obama can somehow erode their confidence in Romney to promote the pro-life perspective as president that could suppress turnout of social conservative voters.

Jim Geraghty, a National Review writer, has spotted what he thinks is a very likely 11th-hour attack the Obama campaign may run against Romney in an attempt to make him look disingenuous about his pro-life conversion. Geraghty cites a CNS News report also speculating about such an attack on Romney in the days leading up to the November election.

The attack would center on disproved claims that Romney, during his time at Bain Capital, which once owned waste cleanup company Stericycle, was somehow associated with the company in arranging contracts with Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses to dispose of the bodies of babies victimized by abortions. LifeNews has rebutted these false attacks, which are based on erroneous claims that Romney worked at Bain longer than either he or Bain say was the case and we have noted that no documents exist showing any connection between Romney and Stericycle’s link to the abortion industry.

In fact, not only was Romney no longer involved at Bain at the time Stericycle began its association with the abortion industry, but Bain itself had divested from the company.

Still, Geraghty and CNS believe the Obama campaign, which has been heavily blasting Romney for his ties to the venture capital firm in recent weeks, will use the disproved connection to attack Romney from the right. As CNS wrote:

And inside both Bain and the Romney campaign, there is a strong belief that either the Obama campaign or a Democratic ally wants to use another Bain investment against Romney late in the campaign but cannot do so with any credibility under the February 1999 departure scenario.

The investment in question: Stericycle, a medical waste company that, among other things, disposed of aborted fetuses.

How could the Stericycle investment be used against Romney?

Bain’s involvement in a company that disposed of aborted fetuses could make a powerful final week direct mail piece or attack ad on Christian radio. And in a close election, turnout of the religious right is one of the keys to a Romney victory in November.

CNS refutes the claim, indicating that “Bain negotiated the Stericyle investment deal in November 1999, nine months after Romney said he left.”

But Geraghty, who also cites CNN reporting disproving the claims, says that won’t stop the Obama campaign.

“Considering how the sudden revelation of George W. Bush’s twenty-four-year-old DUI hurt his bid in 2000, that certainly seems to fit past campaign history,” he writes. “Of course, if everyone knows that Romney wasn’t at Bain at the time, the attack won’t work. So in order to drive down turnout among pro-life voters, the Obama campaign needs the electorate to believe Romney was at Bain from 1999 to 2002.”

He also cites a report in the left-wing Huffington Post that also refutes the Romney-Stericycle-abortion link claims.

“By the time Bain Capital had made the investment in Stericycle, he had left the firm to run the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. He maintained ownership in Bain and kept holdings in its private equity funds, which included Stericycle stock, but he had no say in the managerial or strategic decisions at the firm, according to Bain officials,” HuffPo reported. “There is no publicly available data showing that either Romney or other officials at Bain knew of Stericycle’s work with Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics before the investment.”